Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Massachusetts voters, fooled by "Le Tigra"

Last night, as soon as the race was called for Scott Brown, I said on Twitter: "Congratulations Massachusetts, Derek Zoolander is your new state senator." Sure, Scott Brown was a male model with what appears to be the same thimble sized intellectual depth as the Zoolander character. But just like the Ben Stiller character who believed that he had a wealth of signature looks when in reality he basically gave the same facial expression each time, Scott Brown too believed that the voters of the great state of Massachusetts wouldn't figure out that the centrist stance that he was running on was still the same old Scott Brown. Well he was right, Massachusetts was fooled by "Le Tigra". Or "Blue Steel?" Or "Ferrari?" Pick a Zoolander facial expression.

Listen, I know that your garden variety republican pundit will wax poetic on some cable news show where he is never challenged that the vote in Massachusetts was a referendum on Health Care. Some progressives(see Anthony Weiner, Jane Hamsher, and Arianna Huffington) will disingenuously agree and adopt those same right wing frames because they don't think the bill goes far enough. Many have already claimed that the Scott Brown victory was a clear repudiation of the Obama agenda. Well, I personally don't see how anyone can comfortably come to any of those conclusions when you had a crappy candidate who ran a lazily abysmal campaign in the first place. I'm saying, save that "repudiation" shit for the time when the candidate doesn't put her campaign on cruise control for most of December. When the Democratic leadership doesn't allow said candidate to put their campaign on cruise control and gives her/him an encouraging kick in the ass. The "referendum" rhetoric would make sense only if that same Democratic Leadership had learned something from the Virgina Gubernatorial loss and stopped getting "Eddie Haskell-ed", allowing foaming mouthed right wingers to paint themselves as lovable centrists that you'd trust with your sister.

If anything, the message I get from this election is that Progressives have to abandon the hyperbolic hyperventilating, the histrionic hand-wringing, and the petulant Nihilism. We should constantly hold President Obama accountable, but like Bob Cesca always says, there is a smart way to do it that without severely depressing the base and giving both comfort and artillery to your fiercest enemies. I'm certain that one of the reasons the Democratic base in Massachusetts wasn't particularly excited was probably from hearing one too many Progressives call Obama a crypto-republican, corporate sell out, sodomizer of grandmothers. Whatever the fuck the clumsy charge was that week.

If anything, the message I get from this election is that Obama should stop extending his hand out to republicans and start landing some preemptively well placed throatchops. The thing about republicans, even if their claims happen to be hysterical and nonsensical, is that they are firm believers in repetition. Its like my hideous looking neighbor who is married to a woman who is out of his league, fuck that, she isn't even in the same sport. After I befriended the woman and asked in the most polite way my limited vocabulary would allow how she ended up her wet Gremlin of a husband, she said "Well, he was the most persistent. Shit, he really just wore me down". The President can't be the lonely, chubby neighbor pining for a woman of that magnitude as he engages in a daily ritual that has made his right arm extremely stronger than the left. (Yes, I'm the masturbating fat guy in that analogy)